I began this book to the tune of German bombs, and I begin this second
chapter in the added racket of the barrage. The yellow gun-flashes are lighting the sky,
the splinters are rattling on the housetops, and London Bridge is falling down, falling
down, falling down. Anyone able to read a map knows that we are in deadly danger. I do not
mean that we are beaten or need be beaten. Almost certainly the outcome depends on our own
will. But at this moment we are in the soup, full fathom five, and we have been brought
there by follies which we are still committing and which will drown us altogether if we do
not mend our ways quickly.

What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism - that is, an
economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and
operated solely for profit - does not work. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact
had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because
there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained
themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one
nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for
the best. Hitlers conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of
capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a
try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the
result.

When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy
that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The
paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by
ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a
paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That
settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the
fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is
stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to
those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism.

Socialism is usually defined as common ownership of the means of
production. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and
everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of
private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all
productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State.
The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all
ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the
problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never
consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in
furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of
war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing
is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it.

In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply
calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only
limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to
be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued
in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the
moment.

However, it has become clear in the last few years that common
ownership of the means of production is not in itself a sufficient definition of
Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no
more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege,
especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the
reappearance of a class-system. Centralized ownership has very little meaning unless the
mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control
over the government. The State may come to mean no more than a self-elected
political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on
money.

But what then is Fascism?

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that
borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes.
Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never
been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and - this is the important
point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism
- generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before
the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in
control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working
hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes
reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the
salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination
of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war
machine the world has ever seen.

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that
which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal
human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the
opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality,
the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world.
Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors
have proved over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even
mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas!
Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude
towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs,
Poles, French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return
just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will
probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitlers forthcoming wars with Russia and
America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main
castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the
Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European
populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the semi-apes
as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery.

However horrible this system may seem to us, it works. It works
because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest, and not
allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way.
British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private
profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are
pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not
totally opposed to those of the State.

All through the critical years British capitalism, with its immense
industrial plant and its unrivalled supply of skilled labour, was unequal to the strain of
preparing for war. To prepare for war on the modern scale you have got to divert the
greater part of your national income to armaments, which means cutting down on consumption
goods. A bombing plane, for instance, is equivalent in price to fifty small motor cars, or
eight thousand pairs of silk stockings, or a million loaves of bread. Clearly you
cant have many bombing planes without lowering the national standard of life.
It is guns or butter, as Marshal Goering remarked. But in Chamberlains England the
transition could not be made. The rich would not face the necessary taxation, and while
the rich are still visibly rich it is not possible to tax the poor very heavily either.
Moreover, so long as profit was the main object the manufacturer had no incentive
to change over from consumption goods to armaments. A businessmans first duty is to
his shareholders. Perhaps England needs tanks, but perhaps it pays better to manufacture
motor cars. To prevent war material from reaching the enemy is common sense, but to sell
in the highest market is a business duty. Right at the end of August 1939 the British
dealers were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber,
copper and shellac - and this in the clear, certain knowledge that war was going to break
out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razor to cut your
throat with. But it was good business.

And now look at the results. After 1934 it was known that Germany was
rearming. After 1936 everyone with eyes in his head knew that war was coming. After Munich
it was merely a question of how soon the war would begin. In September 1939 war broke out.
Eight months later it was discovered that, so far as equipment went, the British
army was barely beyond the standard of 1918. We saw our soldiers fighting their way
desperately to the coast, with one aeroplane against three, with rifles against tanks,
with bayonets against tommy-guns. There were not even enough revolvers to supply all the
officers. After a year of war the regular army was still short of 300,000 tin hats. There
had even, previously, been a shortage of uniforms - this in one of the greatest
woollen-goods producing countries in the world!

What had happened was that the whole moneyed class, unwilling to face a
change in their way of life, had shut their eyes to the nature of Fascism and modern war.
And false optimism was fed to the general public by the gutter press, which lives on its
advertisements and is therefore interested in keeping trade conditions normal. Year after
year the Beaverbrook press assured us in huge headlines that THERE WILL BE NO WAR, and as
late as the beginning of 1939 Lord Rothermere was describing Hitler as a great
gentleman. And while England in the moment of disaster proved to be short of every
war material except ships, it is not recorded that there was any shortage of motor cars,
fur coats, gramophones, lipstick, chocolates or silk stockings. And dare anyone pretend
that the same tug-of-war between private profit and public necessity is not still
continuing? England fights for her life, but business must fight for profits. You can
hardly open a newspaper without seeing the two contradictory processes happening side by
side. On the very same page you will find the Government urging you to save and the seller
of some useless luxury urging you to spend. Lend to Defend, but Guinness is Good for You.
Buy a Spitfire, but also buy Haig and Haig, Ponds Face Cream and Black Magic
Chocolates.

But one thing gives hope - the visible swing in public opinion. If we
can survive this war, the defeat in Flanders will turn out to have been one of the great
turning-points in English history. In that spectacular disaster the working class, the
middle class and even a section of the business community could see the utter rottenness
of private capitalism. Before that the case against capitalism had never been proved.
Russia, the only definitely Socialist country, was backward and far away. All criticism
broke itself against the rat-trap faces of bankers and the brassy laughter of
stockbrokers. Socialism? Ha! ha! ha! Wheres the money to come from? Ha! ha! ha! The
lords of property were firm in their seats, and they knew it. But after the French
collapse there came something that could not be laughed away, something that neither
cheque-books nor policemen were any use against - the bombing. Zweee - BOOM! Whats
that? Oh, only a bomb on the Stock Exchange. Zweee - BOOM! Another acre of somebodys
valuable slum-property gone west. Hitler will at any rate go down in history as the man
who made the City of London laugh on the wrong side of its face. For the first time in
their lives the comfortable were uncomfortable, the professional optimists had to admit
that there was something wrong. It was a great step forward. From that time onwards the
ghastly job of trying to convince artificially stupefied people that a planned economy
might be better than a free-for-all in which the worst man wins - that job will never be
quite so ghastly again.

*

The difference between Socialism and capitalism is not primarily a
difference of technique. One cannot simply change from one system to the other as one
might install a new piece of machinery in a factory, and then carry on as before, with the
same people in positions of control. Obviously there is also needed a complete shift of
power. New blood, new men, new ideas - in the true sense of the word, a revolution.

I have spoken earlier of the soundness and homogeneity of England, the
patriotism that runs like a connecting thread through almost all classes. After Dunkirk
anyone who had eyes in his head could see this. But it is absurd to pretend that the
promise of that moment has been fulfilled. Almost certainly the mass of the people are now
ready for the vast changes that are necessary; but those changes have not even begun to
happen.

England is a family with the wrong members in control. Almost entirely
we are governed by the rich, and by people who step into positions of command by right of
birth. Few if any of these people are consciously treacherous, some of them are not even
fools, but as a class they are quite incapable of leading us to victory. They could not do
it, even if their material interests did not constantly trip them up. As I pointed out
earlier, they have been artificially stupefied. Quite apart from anything else, the rule
of money sees to it that we shall be governed largely by the old - that is, by people
utterly unable to grasp what age they are living in or what enemy they are fighting.
Nothing was more desolating at the beginning of this war than the way in which the whole
of the older generation conspired to pretend that it was the war of 1914-18 over again.
All the old duds were back on the job, twenty years older, with the skull plainer in their
faces. Ian Hay was cheering up the troops, Belloc was writing articles on strategy,
Maurois doing broadcasts, Bairnsfather drawing cartoons. It was like a tea-party of
ghosts. And that state of affairs has barely altered. The shock of disaster brought a few
able men like Bevin to the front, but in general we are still commanded by people who
managed to live through the years 1931-9 without even discovering that Hitler was
dangerous. A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.

As soon as one considers any problem of this war - and it does not
matter whether it is the widest aspect of strategy or the tiniest detail of home
organization - one sees that the necessary moves cannot be made while the social structure
of England remains what it is. Inevitably, because of their position and upbringing, the
ruling class are fighting for their own privileges, which cannot possibly be reconciled
with the public interest. It is a mistake to imagine that war aims, strategy, propaganda
and industrial organization exist in watertight compartments. All are interconnected.
Every strategic plan, every tactical method, even every weapon will bear the stamp of the
social system that produced it. The British ruling class are fighting against Hitler, whom
they have always regarded and whom some of them still regard as their protector against
Bolshevism. That does not mean that they will deliberately sell out; but it does mean that
at every decisive moment they are likely to falter, pull their punches, do the wrong
thing.

Until the Churchill Government called some sort of halt to the process,
they have done the wrong thing with an unerring instinct ever since 1931. They helped
Franco to overthrow the Spanish Government, although anyone not an imbecile could have
told them that a Fascist Spain would be hostile to England. They fed Italy with war
materials all through the winter of 1939-40, although it was obvious to the whole world
that the Italians were going to attack us in the spring. For the sake of a few hundred
thousand dividend-drawers they are turning India from an ally into an enemy. Moreover, so
long as the moneyed classes remain in control, we cannot develop any but a defensive
strategy. Every victory means a change in the status quo. How can we drive the
Italians out of Abyssinia without rousing echoes among the coloured peoples of our own
Empire? How can we even smash Hitler without the risk of bringing the German Socialists
and Communists into power? The left-wingers who wail that this is a capitalist
war and that British Imperialism is fighting for loot have got their
heads screwed on backwards. The last thing the British moneyed class wish for is to
acquire fresh territory. It would simply be an embarrassment. Their war aim (both
unattainable and unmentionable) is simply to hang on to what they have got.

Internally, England is still the rich mans Paradise. All talk of
equality of sacrifice is nonsense. At the same time as factory-workers are
asked to put up with longer hours, advertisements for Butler. One in family, eight
in staff  are appearing in the press. The bombed-out populations of the East End go
hungry and homeless while wealthier victims simply step into their cars and flee to
comfortable country houses. The Home Guard swells to a million men in a few weeks, and is
deliberately organized from above in such a way that only people with private incomes can
hold positions of command. Even the rationing system is so arranged that it hits the poor
all the time, while people with over £2,000 a year are practically unaffected by it.
Everywhere privilege is squandering good will. In such circumstances even propaganda
becomes almost impossible. As attempts to stir up patriotic feeling, the red posters
issued by the Chamberlain Government at the beginning of the war broke all depth-records.
Yet they could not have been much other than they were, for how could Chamberlain and his
followers take the risk of rousing strong popular feeling againstFascism?
Anyone who was genuinely hostile to Fascism must also be opposed to Chamberlain himself
and to all the others who had helped Hitler into power. So also with external propaganda.
In all Lord Halifaxs speeches there is not one concrete proposal for which a single
inhabitant of Europe would risk the top joint of his little finger. For what war aim can
Halifax, or anyone like him, conceivably have, except to put the clock back to 1933?

It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people
can be set free. Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it means a
fundamental shift of power. Whether it happens with or without bloodshed is largely an
accident of time and place. Nor does it mean the dictatorship of a single class. The
people in England who grasp what changes are needed and are capable of carrying them
through are not confined to any one class, though it is true that very few people with
over £2,000 a year are among them. What is wanted is a conscious open revolt by ordinary
people against inefficiency, class privilege and the rule of the old. It is not primarily
a question of change of government. British governments do, broadly speaking, represent
the will of the people, and if we alter our structure from below we shall get the
government we need. Ambassadors, generals, officials and colonial administrators who are
senile or pro-Fascist are more dangerous than Cabinet ministers whose follies have to be
committed in public. Right through our national life we have got to fight against
privilege, against the notion that a half-witted public-schoolboy is better for command
than an intelligent mechanic. Although there are gifted and honest individuals
among them, we have got to break the grip of the moneyed class as a whole. England has got
to assume its real shape. The England that is only just beneath the surface, in the
factories and the newspaper offices, in the aeroplanes and the submarines, has got to take
charge of its own destiny.

In the short run, equality of sacrifice, war-Communism, is
even more important than radical economic changes. It is very necessary that industry
should be nationalized, but it is more urgently necessary that such monstrosities as
butlers and private incomes should disappear forthwith. Almost certainly the
main reason why the Spanish Republic could keep up the fight for two and a half years
against impossible odds was that there were no gross contrasts of wealth. The people
suffered horribly, but they all suffered alike. When the private soldier had not a
cigarette, the general had not one either. Given equality of sacrifice, the morale of a
country like England would probably be unbreakable. But at present we have nothing to
appeal to except traditional patriotism, which is deeper here than elsewhere, but is not
necessarily bottomless. At some point or another you have got to deal with the man who
says I should be no worse off under Hitler. But what answer can you give him -
that is, what answer that you can expect him to listen to - while common soldiers risk
their lives for two and sixpence a day, and fat women ride about in Rolls-Royce cars,
nursing pekineses?

It is quite likely that this war will last three years. It will mean
cruel overwork, cold dull winters, uninteresting food, lack of amusements, prolonged
bombing. It cannot but lower the general standard of living, because the essential act of
war is to manufacture armaments instead of consumable goods. The working class will have
to suffer terrible things. And they will suffer them, almost indefinitely, provided
that they know what they are fighting for. They are not cowards, and they are not even
internationally minded. They can stand all that the Spanish workers stood, and more. But
they will want some kind of proof that a better life is ahead for themselves and their
children. The one sure earnest of that is that when they are taxed and overworked they
shall see that the rich are being hit even harder. And if the rich squeal audibly, so much
the better.

We can bring these things about, if we really want to. It is not true
that public opinion has no power in England. It never makes itself heard without achieving
something; it has been responsible for most of the changes for the better during the past
six months. But we have moved with glacier-like slowness, and we have learned only from
disasters. It took the fall of Paris to get rid of Chamberlain and the unnecessary
suffering of scores of thousands of people in the East End to get rid or partially rid of
Sir John Anderson. It is not worth losing a battle in order to bury a corpse. For we are
fighting against swift evil intelligences, and time presses, and history to the defeated
may say Alas! but cannot alter or pardon.

*

During the last six months there has been much talk of the Fifth
Column. From time to time obscure lunatics have been jailed for making speeches in
favour of Hitler, and large numbers of German refugees have been interned, a thing which
has almost certainly done us great harm in Europe. It is of course obvious that the idea
of a large, organized army of Fifth Columnists suddenly appearing on the streets with
weapons in their hands, as in Holland and Belgium, is ridiculous. Nevertheless a Fifth
Column danger does exist. One can only consider it if one also considers in what way
England might be defeated.

It does not seem probable that air bombing can settle a major war.
England might well be invaded and conquered, but the invasion would be a dangerous gamble,
and if it happened and failed it would probably leave us more united and less Blimp-ridden
than before. Moreover, if England were overrun by foreign troops the English people would
know that they had been beaten and would continue the struggle. It is doubtful whether
they could be held down permanently, or whether Hitler wishes to keep an army of a million
men stationed in these islands. A government of -, - and - (you can fill in the names)
would suit him better. The English can probably not be bullied into surrender, but they
might quite easily be bored, cajoled or cheated into it, provided that, as at Munich, they
did not know that they were surrendering. It could happen most easily when the war seemed
to be going well rather than badly. The threatening tone of so much of the German and
Italian propaganda is a psychological mistake. It only gets home on intellectuals. With
the general public the proper approach would be Lets call it a draw. It
is when a peace-offer along those lines is made that the pro-Fascists will raise
their voices.

But who are the pro-Fascists? The idea of a Hitler victory appeals to
the very rich, to the Communists, to Mosleys followers, to the pacifists, and to
certain sections among the Catholics. Also, if things went badly enough on the Home Front,
the whole of the poorer section of the working class might swing round to a position that
was defeatist though not actively pro-Hitler.

In this motley list one can see the daring of German propaganda, its
willingness to offer everything to everybody. But the various pro-Fascist forces are not
consciously acting together, and they operate in different ways.

The Communists must certainly be regarded as pro-Hitler, and are bound
to remain so unless Russian policy changes, but they have not very much influence.
Mosleys Blackshirts, though now lying very low, are a more serious danger, because
of the footing they probably possess in the armed forces. Still, even in its palmiest days
Mosleys following can hardly have numbered 50,000. Pacifism is a psychological
curiosity rather than a political movement. Some of the extremer pacifists, starting out
with a complete renunciation of violence, have ended by warmly championing Hitler and even
toying with antisemitism. This is interesting, but it is not important. Pure
pacifism, which is a by-product of naval power, can only appeal to people in very
sheltered positions. Moreover, being negative and irresponsible, it does not inspire much
devotion. Of the membership of the Peace Pledge Union, less than fifteen per cent even pay
their annual subscriptions. None of these bodies of people, pacifists, Communists or
Blackshirts, could bring a large-scale stop-the-war movement into being by their own
efforts. But they might help to make things very much easier for a treacherous government
negotiating surrender. Like the French Communists, they might become the half-conscious
agents of millionaires.

The real danger is from above. One ought not to pay any attention to
Hitlers recent line of talk about being the friend of the poor man, the enemy of
plutocracy, etc. etc. Hitlers real self is in Mein Kampf, and in his actions.
He has never persecuted the rich, except when they were Jews or when they tried actively
to oppose him. He stands for a centralized economy which robs the capitalist of most of
his power but leaves the structure of society much as before. The State controls industry,
but there are still rich and poor, masters and men. Therefore, as against genuine
Socialism, the moneyed class have always been on his side. This was crystal clear at the
time of the Spanish Civil War, and clear again at the time when France surrendered.
Hitlers puppet government are not working men, but a gang of bankers, gaga generals
and corrupt right-wing politicians.

That kind of spectacular, conscious treachery is less likely to
succeed in England, indeed is far less likely even to be tried. Nevertheless, to many
payers of supertax this war is simply an insane family squabble which ought to be stopped
at all costs. One need not doubt that a peace movement is on foot somewhere in
high places; probably a shadow Cabinet has already been formed. These people will get
their chance not in the moment of defeat but in some stagnant period when boredom is
reinforced by discontent. They will not talk about surrender, only about peace; and
doubtless they will persuade themselves, and perhaps other people, that they are acting
for the best. An army of unemployed led by millionaires quoting the Sermon on the Mount -
that is our danger. But it cannot arise when we have once introduced a reasonable degree
of social justice. The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet
of Goerings bombing planes.